Hazel Blears 'on Botox', says Lib Dem

Greg Stone, a Liberal Democrat candidate, suggested Hazel Blears was 'on
Botox' and criticised Theresa May's dress sense while writing under a
pseudonym on the Guido Fawkes political website.

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An illegal immigrant helped Hazel Blears in her local campaign team.Photo: PA

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Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, is a political blogger

By David Hencke

9:15PM GMT 19 Dec 2009

Mr Stone was ordered to apologise by Nick Clegg, his party leader, after he was revealed as the author of lewd and offensive comments about Cabinet ministers and women MPs.

Mr Stone is the candidate in the Lib Dem target seat of Newcastle East, where he is the main challenger to the sitting Labour MP Nick Brown, the Government chief whip.

The episode is embarrassing for Mr Clegg since he and most of the Lib Dem shadow cabinet have backed Mr Stone by visiting his seat in the past year. Mr Clegg sent a personal letter to voters in the constituency last month urging them to support Mr Stone.

Using the pen-name Inamicus, Mr Stone left his comments on the Guido Fawkes website as part of a weekly live discussion of Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, in which many contributors make personal criticisms of MPs.

Among Mr Stone's targets were David Miliband, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the former home secretary.

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He twice attacked Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, once asking "How much Botox is Blears on?" and later adding "Don't know about Botox, think Blears has had a stroke."

He described Mr Miliband as looking "monged", made a sexual comment about Mr Straw, and made an apparent reference to Ms Smith's cleavage.

Women MPs were singled out for harsh treatment. Anne McIntosh, the Conservative MP for the Vale of York – against whom Mr Stone stood in 2001 – was attacked four times. She was variously described as "a depressed woman in blue", " needing a makeover", being "in spinster librarian mode again" and looking "like a deckchair today".

Theresa Villiers, the shadow transport secretary, and Ms May, the shadow women's minister and work and pensions secretary, were also accused of lacking dress sense. Mr Stone wrote that "Villiers needs to go on What Not to Wear" and that "Theresa looks like she going for the Scottish Widows ad look".

Other women in the firing line were Sharon Hodgson, the Labour MP, who was described as the "thickest MP in the House", and Roberta Blackman-Woods, the Labour MP, who was described as a "sour-faced bitch".

Other backbenchers attacked include William Olner, the Labour MP, who was called "a nonentity", and Nigel Evans, the Conservative MP, who was labelled a "nodding dog" and a "creep".

Even one of Mr Stone's potential future Lib Dem colleagues, Paul Rowen, MP for Rochdale, was criticised as "the dullest MP in the House".

Other comments left by Mr Stone on the Guido Fawkes site heaped praise on Mr Clegg and on Vince Cable, the Lib Dem treasury spokesman. The candidate boasted that he had advised his party leader on a question and predicted what Mr Cable was going to say on Lib Dem policy.

When confronted about the remarks, Mr Stone said yesterday: "I made a number of comments about politicians in a spirit of political banter as part of a web chat room conversation over a year ago. I recognise that some of these comments were inappropriate and I regret any offence that they have caused. It is a lesson to all of us that we must always be aware of the impact on others of our comments, however motivated."

Mr Clegg distanced himself from Mr Stone, saying that the candidate was "not an adviser to the leadership", even though Mr Stone has used the Twitter website to claim on numerous occasions that he has been meeting or talking to his party leader.

A party spokeswoman said yesterday "Greg Stone has rightly apologised for his behaviour in making inappropriate comments on a political gossip website."

Paul Staines, the political blogger behind the Guido Fawkes website, attempted to play down Mr Stone's comments. He called the remarks "pretty tame" and said they had been made in the context of "a blokey barroom, profanity-strewn critique of PMQs participated in by hundreds of co-conspirators every Wednesday",

Mr Stone, who has been a city councillor in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for more than decade, says he stands on a policy of openness and claims on his website to be "responsible for delivering significant investment in housing, regeneration, and transport projects in the city".